Humans & Society

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The advent of mass-produced trans fat helped make the doughnuts, cookies and crackers we love inexpensive and shelf-stable. But now companies have to get along without them, while we still want to have our cake and eat it, too.

COLONIAL BIGWIGS Researchers have found the remains of four men buried alongside one another in a Jamestown, Virginia, church more than 400 years ago. These men were among the leaders of the Jamestown colony.

Donald E. Hurlbert/Smithsonian Institution

Johns Hopkins doctor Leo Kanner published an influential paper in 1943 describing autistic children. This and a host of other moments from autism's past receive an accounting in NeuroTribes, a look at the progression of thought surrounding the condition.